


no new thing

by sacae



Category: Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
Genre: Implications of child abuse, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers for the ending, Suicidal Ideation, does a clone count as an AU of a canon character or an OC?, like way... way post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 20:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15714906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacae/pseuds/sacae
Summary: The truth was, Solomon’s soul couldn’t be reborn into the body of the kid in an off-white hospital gown, because the kid had never been born. The fact that he had managed to call Dantalion to his side using Solomon’s pact with him was a fluke, grounded just on their identical blood, while God only knew if the kid had a soul at all.He wasn’t the same person, but he was a perfect copy. A sleight of hand performed by the arrogance of humanity and the black humor of existence itself: is this your king?





	no new thing

**Author's Note:**

> originally I wrote this over a year ago, but tried to post it when ao3 went down for maintenance and lost the whole thing. recently it came up again in relation to a personal project, so I remade it, but it's... pretty different from before. definitely longer. I wonder if I got carried away?
> 
> I'm a big fan of artificial people.

The room was white and sterile, illuminated by glaring ceiling lights that were probably the source of a faint, but migraine-inducing buzzing noise. A child sat up in a bed, with a sad excuse for a mattress and blankets that looked more like paper than fabric, and dismantled a wooden puzzle he had already solved at least seven times that day alone.

Dantalion scowled at the mere sight of him. “I don’t get it,” he scoffed. “Where the hell did they get the money for this?” However sorry-looking the furnishings in the room may have been, after all, a thin space between the closed curtains gave a glimpse of the surrounding city from an eighth-story view. “I mean, what kind of big name donors just up and decided to throw in their lot with a bunch of lunatics who want to pad out this country’s military with a dead wizard? Humans don’t believe in demons and withcraft anymore, and I thought the ones who do end up cast out like the plague!”

“You’re thinking about it from the wrong perspective.” The child set the puzzle pieces down in his lap and turned his gaze on Dantalion entirely, gave a tilt of his head and an equally tilted smile. “Of course it sounds ridiculous as military funding, but the science of cloning has an incredible number of uses. Most successful cloning ventures in the past have been of living animals, but those methods were deemed insufficient for cloning humans. The fact that they not only managed to clone a human being, but from thousands of years old DNA, and also have kept me alive for this long, is completely unprecedented. With this kind of technology, all sorts of things are possible! It’s an exciting breakthrough for the scientific community, Dantalion!”

“Yeah, sure,” Dantalion cut him off, no more impressed than he had been a minute ago. “And all the extra cost of the ritual books and materials and all that, I guess they just take that out of the budget for your bedding? Old tomes like that cost way too much these days, there’s no way just that would cover it.”

“Well, procuring samples from the remains was expensive, too,” mused the kid.

“That’s just adding to my point,” Dantalion shot back.

“Not if the man with rights to the recently uncovered remains of King Solomon is in on the project and gave an off-the-books discount!”

"How come you know all this, anyway?!"

"The project head doesn't care what I know, so everyone always discusses me like I'm not even there. I hear a lot of things!" He beamed way too brightly, and continuing to talk in words and topics some prepubescent child shouldn’t, he went on, “Well, even if that scientist weren’t involved with this side of it, too, it would still be a good investment for him. The very existence of the figure named ‘King Solomon’ was once in question, after all. There are still people who think there isn't enough evidence, but my miraculous success must have really improved public opinion of that man's discovery, don’t you think?”

‘This side of it’ meaning the side with sigils and summoning and contracts. Dantalion’s side. “What do I care about the reputation of another self-interested hack,” he answered, with more venom in his voice than he had intended. There wasn’t any point in shoving his displeasure in the lap of this child, but the loathing dragged its way out through his throat anyway. And yet the kid just laughed, like he was utterly delighted, even.

He wasn't quite like Solomon, was absolutely nothing like William, and he didn’t have a single one of their memories. Dantalion had tried to goad him into remembering, once; he had taken his hand and spoken of the old world, of Israel, of towers and shackles and angels and demons. He had searched the child’s face for any flicker of recognition as he went on, or even a shadow of that look of old, bone-deep sadness scarred into Dantalion’s memory, but instead he found himself faced with a slack-jawed, wide-eyed expression of pure, glittering awe.

Somehow the whole experience left Dantalion's mouth tasting like bile. He avoided going into the details of Solomon’s life after that, and he never mentioned William at all; he kept them both clutched close to his chest, like lifelines. Or, with equal irony, like prayerbeads.

The truth was, Solomon’s soul couldn’t be reborn into the body of the kid in an off-white hospital gown, because the kid had never been born. The fact that he had managed to call Dantalion to his side using Solomon’s pact with him was a fluke, grounded just on their identical blood, while God only knew if the kid had a soul at all.

He wasn’t the same person, but he was a perfect copy. A sleight of hand performed by the arrogance of humanity and the black humor of existence itself: is this your king?

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” said Dantalion, all but through his teeth.

“You’re always funny,” answered the kid, with absolute cheer. He leaned forward in bed, towards Dantalion, and stared openly without so much as a pretense of subtlety. “You’ve been crossing your arms this whole time. Are you trying to distance yourself from me?”

\--

He may have been long-lived for a clone, but he wasn’t exactly the picture of health to show for it. All the "doctors" and "specialists" flitting around the building just assumed it was par for the course for a science experiment, but sometimes Dantalion wondered how much of it wasn't really just the fault of Solomon's shitty genes.

On into his early teenage years, he would have episodes of illness and lethargy that lasted for days on end. His assigned attendants treated it by lying him down in bed and sticking a needle in his arm to pump him full of something-or-other; no matter how much the kid explained to him about "nutrients" or "bed rest," Dantalion just couldn't see anything _healing_ about it. He finally got so fed up with it one day that he just about slammed a glass of fennel tea on the kid's bedside table, barely avoiding splashing it all across his pillow.

"It's tea!" he barked at the kid's wide-eyed gaze. "Just drink it!"

The top half of the bed was angled up at just enough of a degree that the kid struggled to push himself up with his elbows, but eventually he managed it, sat himself upright, and leaned forward over the tea like he was trying to steam his own face. "They're going to be displeased about this, you know. My nutrition is supposed to be monitored really carefully."

"I don't care," scowled Dantalion, and got a bell-like laugh in answer.

Even compared to Solomon's at the same age, the hands that curled around the mug might have been frailer. "It smells good," he said, and for that quiet, gentle moment, as the sunlight from the window cast a golden glow on his head, he closed his eyes and lifted the cup to his mouth to drink. "Wow! It tastes weird!" he exclaimed.

"Don't drink it then!!" snapped Dantalion.

\--

The kid didn't exactly get hardier as he grew older, but he got more independent, anyway. Somewhere along the way he developed a habit of lying to his own attendants, leveling out his shallow breathing, walking slow to keep his feet from stumbling over his exhaustion. Dantalion hated seeing him push himself, but he hated seeing him strapped to that bed even more. The shut-in rarely ever made it off the eighth floor, anyway; he just liked plopping himself down in the book room.

The attendants called it a library, but it was way too pathetic. They gave him a couple books and puzzles for him to kill time back when he was a child, and then once he finally got tired of those he asked for more books, and then more books, and then more books. He only got one or two each time he asked, and he didn't like making many demands (or at least, he didn't like making many demands of people who weren't _Dantalion_ ), so he tried to stave himself off by retreading old ground, rereading and rereading every book he had as many times as he could stand it before finally requesting another. But he was insatiable in spite of himself, and he hoarded more and more of the things until they had to get him a shelf just to unearth his bedside table again. Then when the shelf couldn't fit them all anymore either, they moved the books into an open area down the hall. By the time he grew past William's tallest height, he had collected about three bookshelves' worth there, clustered by a pair of couches facing one another by a floor-to-ceiling window. It was already more than Dantalion ever wanted to read in his life, even in his thousands of years as a demon, but comparing it to Stratford's library would have been a sad joke. (Let alone the teeming mess of texts that Solomon once lived and breathed in, devoured seemingly without end.)

So it was the book room, as far as Dantalion was concerned, where he almost always found the guy any time he stopped by his bedroom and saw he wasn't there. (Any time, really, except when he was off with project head somewhere, conducting "tests.") It was only a question of what book he'd have cracked open this time, and if he'd actually be upright and reading when Dantalion got there, or if he'd be tipped over napping on one of the armrests.

Dantalion thought his heart might stop the time he found him asleep with the _Lesser Key_ splayed over half his face; compared to that, seeing him laid out under yet another girlish romance was always a bit of a relief. "Hey, wake up," said Dantalion, as he plucked the well-worn paperback novel off the guy's chest and nudged his shoulder. "You'll mess up your neck sleeping like that all the time." He whined out a faint protest as he stirred, but his eyes cracked open nevertheless, slivers of green peering hazily upwards.

"But it's so nice in here," he said with a sleep-addled smile and a stretch, then slung his legs haphazardly off the couch as he slowly sat himself back up. "I can stretch out like a cat in the sun."

"That's no excuse not to take care of yourself," huffed Dantalion. "Besides, you've never even seen a cat for real."

"I've seen Marbas," he yawned, and Dantalion's gut twisted.

It's not like he was the only one who knew this guy was here, far from it. Just about everyone knew he was there, but for the most part, they just stayed away. A decree from the Emperor that "attacking Solomon's clone means death" kept him pretty much safe, but Camio had his hands full keeping a handle on the ongoing political chaos in Hell, and Sitri and Uriel had sent word ages ago that they were doing what they could on their end to keep Heaven from mobilizing in turn. They were too busy to drop in more than every once in a while, and the other pillars all seemed to find it too creepy or too sad; even Astaroth didn't really care to come visit a copy. The guy had their sigils and could summon them at any time, but after the first time he called on Dantalion, he never did.

Or so Dantalion thought. "Since when was Marbas here? I never heard about this."

"You're not the only one who comes to see me." The dismissal felt like a slap, even though he followed it up with a smile. "But I'm always happy when you do," he went on, and leaned forward towards Dantalion, bracing his elbows on his knees. "Do you like cats, Dantalion?"

He still looked tired. "They're cute, I guess," muttered Dantalion, who already had one too many cat aficionados to entertain in his life and quickly backtracked, "You should get back to bed. Come on, you can lean on me if you have to."

"Mm," he answered, vaguely an agreement, but didn't immediately move to stand. Instead he turned towards the view out the window, gazing out at the city below with his head tilted and his eyes lowered in a way painfully reminiscent of Solomon, a habit that had been cropping up more and more in recent years.

When had he started doing that?

Why had Dantalion never realized that about him before?

\--

(The first time Dantalion met this copy-king, he was summoned. The second time, he came on his own, and the kid's eyes went round and shone at the sight of him.

"Don't let any of the nurses see you," he told Dantalion back then, smiling from ear to ear. "Let's keep it a secret! As a demon, you can do that, right?" And then, too, "You'll come to see me again, right?")

\--

One day, instead of faking wellness, he faked illness. Everyone was fooled, and easily; he'd never done it before, so why start now? Even Dantalion sped off to fetch him tea when he saw him curled up under the covers and breathing heavily.

When Dantalion placed the mug on the bedside table, pale hands reached out and enveloped his grip, trapped his fingers against the warmth of the ceramic. “Run away with me, Dantalion.”

He couldn’t say no to him.

\--

The guy was fully grown by then (for as much as a man with next to no muscle mass could really be called "grown," anyway), but the moment Dantalion got him outside, he morphed right into an overstimulated child. He whined about the clothes Dantalion forced him to wear, whined about the cold, whined about the weird sensation of walking in shoes, and then ran right into a snowbank and laughed while shoving his hands in it. "It's snow!" he exclaimed, and then after yelping and clutching at Dantalion's arm as a car sped past, "So that's what cars are like up close!"

Physically he only went at the pace of a fast walk, but emotionally it was impossible to keep up with him. Eventually, after minutes worth of grabbing him out of the street and dragging him away from staring creepily through windows and making sure he obeyed street signs and walk signals, with the guy chattering the whole way about all the stuff he recognized from his books, he finally wrangled them both onto the doorstep of an indoor mall. Upon crossing the threshold, for just a moment, the guy slowed to a stop, green eyes wide and shining as he turned his head this way and that and slowly took everything in. And then he was off again, sneezing violently from a perfume sample, plopping down on the beds at a furniture store, and pulling out article after article of clothing to whirl on Dantalion and declare brightly, "You should wear this, Dantalion!"

"Absolutely not!!" he protested every time, and every time the guy just laughed and ran off with it. "Wait! You have to pay for that!!" Dantalion shouted after him, and snatched it away to bring it to the counter, mumbling an apology.

He repeated this with quite a few things - the clothes, some cheap jewelry, a pastry that almost made him start crying when he bit into it - before Dantalion caught onto his game and grabbed him by the shoulder to stop him. “Hey! Don't you know you need to use money for all this?!”

Cheeks still dusted with powered sugar, he turned to stare at Dantalion with such round eyes that for a moment, Dantalion thought the answer was going to be “no.” “But you’re already paying for everything.”

"Why you--!!"

Every so often he would have to stop to catch his breath, but he stubbornly went on, laughing, even as a steady wheeze worked its way into his throat. Finally, after almost a half an hour of fiddling with everything he could get his shaking hands on in a toy shop (and dropping almost half of them in the process), he leaned heavily against the side of a shelf, chest heaving, until he toppled towards the ground as Dantalion lunged to catch him.

"Hey, don't overdo it so much," said Dantalion, his eyebrows knitting together. It had been stupid of him to let this guy run around like this when he knew how weak he was, but he had been laughing and smiling so much, had seemed so unrecognizably _happy_ , that Dantalion let them both get carried away.

The man in his arms struggled to breathe, struggled to speak, but managed to curl his trembling fingers in the fabric of Dantalion's coat and whispered, "Thank you."

And then, "Take me back, Dantalion."

\--

The only reason Dantalion left the guy's side while he was recovering was because Astaroth called him away. There was strife building in the on the east end of the continent ( _again_ ), and he still had to see to his real responsibilities as a Duke sometimes. The world was always in chaos; war came so easily to Dantalion by now that it was barely even a distraction.

Astaroth eyed him at the end of the briefing, taking in the lines of his face. "You're looking beat," she said. "Something to do with that clone?"

"Yeah," he admitted, weary, and she reached out to him and patted his shoulder.

"For what it's worth," Astaroth told him, in an oddly gentle voice, "we're all glad you're looking after him."

\--

The next time Dantalion saw him, he was summoned. For a second, Dantalion couldn't figure out where they were; this wasn't the book room, or the hospital-like little bedroom, or any other space in that tower.

He smiled at Dantalion with the early spring breeze in his hair and the wide blue sky behind him, a pile of papers held down by a book and Dantalion's sigil laid out in marker on the roof beneath their feet.

"Dantalion," he asked, "Do you think I have a soul?"

"... What?" said Dantalion. He had a sinking feeling about this, about where they were, about the tender expression on this person's face. How had he even gotten to the roof?

"A soul," he repeated. "But you don't know, do you? No one seems to know for sure, no matter who I ask. It could mean there really isn't one, but I think everyone is just too scared to check." Any way of 'checking' would involve something on the level of 'trying to rip it out.' Dantalion's hackles went up in a second, but even as he opened his mouth, he couldn't get a word in edgewise. "What makes a soul, anyway? What do they do? I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Or rather, I've been looking for something." Green eyes looked away, towards the edge of the roof. "For a way to break these contracts."

"Wha- you can't!" Dantalion protested, without even knowing why.

"You're right. Because that would separate you from Solomon." His gaze flicked back to Dantalion, and he almost grinned at the shellshocked look he found there. "But I don't have his soul, right? Or else I would have remembered all the things you talked about once. Instead, this is the only life I've had."

His smile faded.

"Because of that," he went on, "it should be possible to keep the bond between all of you and Solomon's soul, but sever my control. I've been looking and looking... but I'm an anomaly, so of course the answer wouldn't just be lying around already. No one else has ever needed to know." Quietly, he added, "It might be easier if we could find where Solomon's soul is now."

"Stop," said Dantalion, worry creeping into his voice. His head was filling up with every worst possible scenario he could imagine, scene after scene of the light leaving this man's eyes, his body engulfed by plague or flames, his spirit torn asunder by his own misstep with dark magic. "That's dangerous-! You don't know what you're doing! Demon contracts aren't toys! And what's the problem with you having control, anyway?" Gaining more certainty, Dantalion stood up and stepped towards him, snatching at the thin fabric of his hospital gown. "You never even use it!"

"No, I do. I just never told you." Dantalion froze. The person before him placed his hands atop Dantalion's; at the touch of chilled fingers, looking down at him dressed in nearly nothing, somewhere in the corner of Dantalion's mind came the thought that he shouldn't be outside in the cold like this. "In fact, I made sure no one could tell you."

"You," said Dantalion, thinking it over. "Marbas-"

"It wasn't just Marbas," he corrected. "Paimon, Amon, Vinea, Beleth, Astaroth, Marchosias, Eligos, Valefar, Amdusias..." Even Amon. Even Astaroth. Dantalion flinched at the sound of their names, even before what came next: "Since I was ten years old, I've been commanding them to do things like steal money and weapons and information, sabotage rival businesses, start wars, overthrow governments, even to kill this country's enemies. And I've commanded them all to be silent." With a faint light in his voice like he almost hoped it might be true, he added, "Did you forget that I was supposed to be a weapon, after all?"

Dantalion was a demon. He didn't really care about some deaths or destroyed economies. It hurt that he had looked both Amon and Astaroth in the eye just days earlier, but what he couldn't stand more than anything else, like a knife in the heart, was that this frail, pallid, pathetic excuse for a human being, with eyes as brittle as his cold, thin fingers, had lied to him.

In the wake of Dantalion's silence, the man finally went on, "I couldn't do that to you. You always came to see me and talk to me... You were my first friend." He smiled a fragile, wavering smile, and Dantalion wanted to cry. "It was just you. The attendants aren't supposed to talk to me - they get changed out if they do. And the project head is-" His voice cracked apart at the same time as his smile did, and when he shook his head and looked away, Dantalion's thoughts, for the first time in a long, long while, strayed to David. "The project head is just using me. I've always known," he finished. "And I went along with it in spite of that. I just wanted to keep what I had with you. But it's not just you who's like this - all of you pillars truly care about him, even now, no matter how long it's been. And I've been trampling on those feelings."

"That's not..." Dantalion tried to cut in, weakly. His grip on the hospital gown went white-knuckled under the other man's touch as he asked, a bit desperately, "Why are you telling me this?"

His eyes trailed back to Dantalion, and then he closed them. "I wanted to confess to you. I wanted to confess everything to you," he said, and let his head loll back in a way that had Dantalion tearing his hand away from the hospital gown's collar. The man couldn't have known why, and yet when he looked at Dantalion once more, it felt like he he knew, like he could see the bruises Dantalion imagined rung around his neck. Like he saw right to Dantalion's core. "It's better if I'm not here," he murmured, his gaze sliding away again. "I don't want to tarnish your bonds with him anymore - but if I have a soul, and in killing myself I descend into hell, then what if the contracts are resolved with that?"

"Killing your- hold _on!_ What are you saying?!" exclaimed Dantalion. "You can't be serious."

"That's why I thought I should try altering the contracts, to remove myself first-"

" _Stop!_ " Dantalion roared and grabbed him by his thin shoulders, and he finally stopped, wide-eyed and quiet. "Why are you saying this now?" Dantalion asked, almost pleaded, lifting his hands to touch the man's cold, red cheeks. "Why couldn't you confide in me? Why do you always have to hide everything? Please," he murmured, pressing their foreheads together, and the man's breath hitched before he closed the distance between them.

\--

Solomon had love in his heart to spare and shared it freely with countless people, and yet it was like the love he got in return was never enough. He was always seeking physicality, always seeking touch, desperate for affection like he was trying to fill some bottomless void in his heart. He needed it like air, but Dantalion could never tell if it really helped; no matter how many wives he took, how many concubines, how many pillars, Solomon always, always, looked like he ached. Dantalion couldn't remember any other time when there was peace in his face, except when he had Dantalion's hands on his throat.

With Dantalion, Solomon became unusually reserved. The rest of the time he was flippant to the point of being callous, laughing at Dantalion's outbursts and ordering him around like a lazy tyrant, but every brush of his fingers against Dantalion's cheek, every grasp of his chin, every ghost of shared breath in the space between them was measured and carefully savored. It was a deliberateness that meant something, but in a language Solomon spoke too well, and Dantalion not well enough.

\--

In the most agonizing, shameful way possible, with the feeling of this copy's lips pressed clumsy and hesitant and desperate against his own, it finally sunk in: this was not Solomon.

He was not Solomon, but Dantalion, who never stopped repeating his own mistakes, had been thinking all this time that he was.

The copy already knew. (Had known this whole time, even. That's what this was all about, wasn't it?) It was written clear on his face when he pulled away and smiled like he was giving up.

"I wanted to confess everything to you," he said again, in a small voice. "So now I can disappear without any regrets."

He stepped back and started to stoop to reach for the rune-covered papers at his feet, only to yelp as Dantalion grabbed him by the crook of his elbow and yanked him back upright.

“So as long as you find some peace with it, we’re just along for the ride?” snapped Dantalion, and Solomon's clone stared at him, stunned. "You know, for all you feel inferior to him, deciding everything on your own without telling anyone is _exactly_ the kind of crap Solomon always pulled."

The clone flinched - had anyone ever talked to him that way before? - and shoved pitifully feebly at Dantalion's arm to try and free himself. "What else am I supposed to do?! I have no choice! I'm going to die anyway." His voice cracked again, unused to the strain of his own wailing. "I can't survive outside of this place. I'm useless if I don't use the contracts like I'm told, so they'll just let me die. I'm just a parasite!"

"Then I'll protect you!" Dantalion declared, and charged on before the other man could protest. "You're not a parasite, you're a person. Your _own_ person. And I'm a demon - these people aren't the only ones who can keep you alive. Trust me," he said, and placed his hands on the other's shoulders. "You deserve to live for yourself. Not for anyone else's ends, and not as anyone else but you. I'll take care of you - I won't let you die, so please, trust me."

The man's shoulders shook under his palms. "I can't... I can't. They'll come after me."

"Please. I can take small fry like them," scoffed Dantalion.

"I'm not the person you really love."

"... Yeah, you and him are totally different," Dantalion agreed. "Hey," he added, and gripped his shoulders more tightly. "You actually really want to live, right?" The man sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath, tears finally welling up, and Dantalion pressed on, "Run away with me again."

He let out a sound that was as much a laugh as it was a sob, and said, "Demons really are corrupting influences." Dantalion nearly bashed his head in on the spot.

"Can't you ever be serious?!" he yapped, just as the other man added, "Okay."

"Okay?" echoed Dantalion, reeling from the shift in mood, and the man beamed like the sun.

"Take me away, Dantalion," he said, and it felt like a promise. Like a contract of their own, of freedom and new beginnings.

One last thing, then.

“Just don’t go trying that partial contract severing you were talking about! You’re the one who’s a test subject, not me!” Dantalion scowled, and took him by the hand to tug him towards the door to the rooftop. "Let's get your goddamn books." The man laughed and stumbled after.

"You know, you've never called me by my name."

"What, you mean _'Solomon Project'_? You want me to start calling you 'Solomon' _now_?"

**Author's Note:**

> 9 That which has been is what will be,  
> That which is done is what will be done,  
> And there is nothing new under the sun.
> 
> 10 Is there anything of which it may be said,  
> “See, this is new”?  
> It has already been in ancient times before us.
> 
> 11 There is no remembrance of former things,  
> Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come  
> By those who will come after.
> 
> \- _Ecclesiastes 1:9-11_


End file.
